How smaller manufacturing companies are taking control of their product data – Part 3: How to reap the benefits quickly

by guest blogger David Chadwick

In my first and second posts in this series I discussed the findings of a new whitepaper from Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity “The business benefits of product data management: Achieving rapid and extendable benefits” and focused on the themes that Jim identified as having a significant impact on the manufacturers that he interviewed: getting control of product data, speeding retrieval of the correct data, and improving collaboration.



This final post focuses on how these benefits can be obtained quickly, and how they can be extended across the organization.

Jim recommends that manufacturers look for solutions that provide best practices in the form of a preconfigured environment and found that Teamcenter Express, the PDM solution selected by the three companies he interviewed, follows these best practices as described in these quotes:



Mr. Gupta, Head of Design at Flovel Industries:

“Our solution is not customized very much because it is a tool that can be used out of the box.”

and from one of our own case studies, Mr Yang Seung-Uk Principal Research Engineer at SATREC Initiative:

“Many people worried that we would need to customize the implementation to our specific requirements to be successful. However, out-of-the-box Teamcenter Express has worked fabulously.”

Jim also recommends that companies take advantage of local channel partners who may have wide experience in helping manufacturers implement PDM.

Mr. Gupta of Flovel:

“An expert audited our process and saw some advantages in doing things differently… as an example, we implemented thin clients at the distant manufacturing plants so they can easily see technical information.”

Mr. Mate, CEO of Veeraja Industries:

“Before buying PDM we only wanted to take care of design, that was our only aim … but we worked with a VAR and they opened us up to other improvement opportunities.”

Summarizing the benefits achieved

The companies researched for Jim’s whitepaper are gaining significant business benefits from their Teamcenter Express implementations including less time spent searching for data, faster response to customer’s requests and a reduction in errors:

Mr. Gupta of Flovel

“We can get the correct and latest information by searching for ten seconds instead of ½ hour conventionally … we have fewer design errors introduced to manufacturing”.

Mr. Mate of Veeraja

“We are able to quote the customers faster, and submit drawings to production people faster … our errors came down drastically”.

Conclusion

The main conclusions from Jim’s research are:

• companies that have PDM recognize how critical controlling data, making information accessible, and sharing knowledge is to their business and can’t imagine living without it


• PDM should be used to share product information with downstream functions such as manufacturing to improve product quality and reduce costly errors


• implementing PDM impacts both the top and bottom lines of manufacturing organizations, and these benefits are achievable in a short period of time

Read the full whitepaper or listen to a podcast summary for more information on how to achieve rapid and extendable benefits from PDM.

About David Chadwick
David Chadwick works for Siemens PLM Software and is responsible for global product marketing for Teamcenter Express, a software solution that enables manufacturing companies to quickly take control of their product data.